“Neill’s hit! Look at him!” cried Jim. “Thunder!”
Colonel Neill was staggering; down he sank. A grape-shot had struck him in the thigh. But the Mexican troops were charging. They swept out gallantly, along the front of Colonel Sherman’s regiment, and entered some timber curving to the right.
The Mexican skirmish line had retired, though. How the Burleson men yelled!
Colonel Sherman spurred to the general. He talked a few moments, and back he galloped to the cavalry.
“Forward, cavalry!” he shouted. “Follow me. Let’s drive those vaqueros [cowherds] out of that timber.”
Around to the right he dashed, and glad of the chance the cavalry pressed after him—Ernest bending low on Duke’s neck, to avoid the moss and branches, and Jim keeping with him, stride for stride. But the Mexican troops were scarcely sighted. Mexican sharpshooters were there, though, among the trees, and without any fight the cavalry must return again before being cut off. Nobody was hurt.
The army were cheering. All the Mexicans had retired; all but the artillery and cavalry were marching back, toward the mouth of the San Jacinto; the field-piece had been withdrawn further into the timber island. The Twin Sisters were peppering the island, and the rear of the Mexican army, but it was rather blind shooting.
Having arrived at the marshy timber stretch southward against the San Jacinto bay, the Mexican army halted, and appeared to be making camp there, three-quarters of a mile away, on other rising ground.
“Our turn now!” shouted a score of voices, along the Texan lines. “Let’s smoke ’em out.”
Everybody, except the general, was eager to charge, and finish the battle then and there. Some of the officers approached the general and asked him either to lead out or else appoint a leader. The men were wild to avenge the Alamo and Goliad. They did not mind being hungry, and worn with the forced marches by day and by night.